Thoughts on Life, Love, Politics, Hypocrisy and Coming Out in Mid-Life

Sunday, April 29, 2018

Trump Could be a Huge Asset for Democrats This Fall

Donald Trump's defining characteristic - even more than his pathological lying - is his malignant narcissism. Everything is ALWAYS about him and he simply cannot accept anything or anyone that doesn't support his "Sun King" vision of himself. The good news is that this characteristic may help Democrats retake control of the House of Representatives - and with luck, the U.S. Senate. Trump forgets that a huge number of voters failed to vote in the 2016 presidential election and that his win traces to only about 27% of voters and a 70,000 vote spread across three states. If those who stayed home (or those who feel they made a huge mistake) turn out in disgust with Trump and/or the GOP's reverse Robin Hood policies, things could be brutal for Republicans. A piece in New York Magazine looks at how Trump may further wound the GOP. Here are highlights:

One of President Trump’s most bedrock character traits is his refusal
to truly reckon with any piece of information that reflects poorly on him. This
self-aggrandizing, reality-denying flavor of egotism has defined
Trump for decades, through his roller-coaster business career and into
political life. In recent months, it has sometimes veered into the straight-up
delusional, as when he reportedly
claimed last year that it wasn’t actually his voice on the Access
Hollywood tape.

Trump’s insistence that everything is going great was
validated in unprecedented fashion when he won the presidency despite some of
the strongest headwinds imaginable, shocking almost everyone — possibly
including, on some deep level, himself.

But now, finally, [Trump's] the president’s unwavering confidence may finally be
about to take a serious electoral toll.The
New York Timesreported
on Saturday that in the runup to the midterm elections this fall, President
Trump is simply not listening to advisers and lawmakers who tell him what
anyone can plainly see: Republicans are in deep trouble:

Congressional
and party leaders and even some Trump aides are concerned that [Trump's] the president’s
boundless self-assurance about politics will cause him to ignore or undermine
their midterm strategy. In battleground states like Arizona, Florida and
Nevada, Mr. Trump’s proclivity to be a loose cannon could endanger the
Republican incumbents and challengers who are already facing ferocious
Democratic headwinds.

In election after election over the last year and a half,
Democrats have vastly over performed their expected vote share, largely thanks
to animus toward the president. They have triumphed in a Pennsylvania
Congressional district where Trump won by more than 20 points, picked up a
Senate seat in ruby-red Alabama, dominated state races in Virginia, and made
close several contests that almost certainly would have been Republican
landslides in previous years. . . . Republicans have been sounding
the alarm for months.

Trump’s reaction to all this: everything will be just fine.

The Times piece also reports that, as his fellow Republicans
fret, Brad Parscale, [Trump's] the president’s pollster, is feeding him inaccurate,
Trump-friendly poll numbers, which [Trump] the president is more than happy to
parade on Twitter.

Why does this matter? Most presidents, even if they claim
not to be obsessed with polls the way Trump is, have a pretty good idea of
their own political currency, and adjust their alignment with their parties
accordingly.

Something different is going on this time around. President Trump
remains enormously
popular within the Republican Party; most Republican members of Congress
have made the calculation that even if Trump is underwater in their state,
defying Trump the president would be a political loser, since it leave them without
any reliable constituency.

The problem is not only that Trump refuses to believe that Republicans
will lose, but that, even if he were sufficiently worried, he doesn’t care
enough about his own party to bother helping.

Establishment Republicans reportedly want Trump to flog the GOP’s
unpopular tax law on the campaign trail. [Trump] The president is pushing back on this
directive — which he is right to do, since the unpopular
law probably isn’t galvanizing anyone to vote.

But [Trump's] the president’s own, predictably unpredictable routine
is unlikely to work much better. He might attack vulnerable Republican Senators
he disagrees with; he might serve more as a distraction than a cheerleader, . .
. This routine won’t turn off voters who already love [Trump] the president. But it’s
more likely to spark another Trump news cycle than rally much-needed enthusiasm
for Republican candidates.

The GOP’s best hope may be to invent reasons that red-state Democrats
are hurting Trump personally, then watch him go wild on Twitter and the
campaign trail.

Republicans seem to have grasped the lesson that Trump needs
to be personally invested in their election results. They are trying to make
the stakes of the election startlingly personal, reportedly telling Trump that
if he doesn’t help them out this fall, they may not have his back if and when
Democrats initiate impeachment proceedings next year. That stark warning may
perk Trump’s ears up, but it’s just as likely to be perceived as an
unacceptable intramural threat, not as motivation to work for the party.

[Trump] will continue living in a bubble of his own making. Because
Trump was right to dismiss the concerns of the many, many people who insisted
he couldn’t win in 2016, he can now perennially point to that shocking election
result as proof that his instincts, not some politico egghead’s, are always
correct. And if Republicans lose big this year, he’ll just say they didn’t
stick by him closely enough.

It’s a dishonest, solipsitic approach to life. But it’s one
that has worked shockingly well for Donald Trump.

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Out gay attorney in a committed relationship; formerly married and father of three wonderful children; sometime activist and political/news junkie; survived coming out in mid-life and hope to share my experiences and reflections with others.
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